The Supercar Registry - It's HEMI time !!! Compliments of NJSteve

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It's HEMI time !!! Compliments of NJSteve

1970 Charger R/T-SE 426 Hemi, 4 Speed
The attached photos are of the longest ongoing extra marital relationship I have had in my life! 17 years and counting. In the 80s I was heavily into Mopars having owned a 71 HemiCuda Convertible (the one Charley L keeps sitting in) and two 440 Six Barrel convertibles as well as a number of other hemi cars. Because of this, people would call me to document their cars and give advice on values, etc. In August 1987 I was called out of the blue by a guy in NJ who asked me to look at his Charger and give him some info on the car. When I arrived and he pulled the blue plastic tarp off the car it was like a scene from Steven King's "Christine". I had to have it. So after a few days of negotiating, I talked him out of the car ...and he talked me out of $14000, an unheard of sum for a non-running Hemi car at the time.

At the time, the car had 12,234 miles on it and no one had been able to drive it since the first owner in the early 1970s who grenaded the motor at 150 mph racing a Trans Am on I-287 in Jersey. Everyone who tried to put it back together, blew it up or gave up: The second owner bought the car and reassembled another engine over a case of beer with his buddies: The result? He installed one piston backwards and the motor ate a valve and punched it through a cylinder head. He parked it and sold it to owner #3 in 1977 who collected the parts to fix it and then just let it sit in his driveway before selling it to me in 1987.

The beer drinking, engine assembly was probably the best thing that ever happened to that car as owner #2 was going to cut the car up to be a bracket racer. He had already cut and welded new leaf spring mounts in the frame, modified the trunk floor and trimmed the front corners of the rear quarters for slick clearance. Had he actually put the engine back together correctly, this car would have been destroyed 20 years ago.

I got the car home and started the reassembly process. The body was stripped of its horrible original paint (it looked great from 50 feet away) and over the next three years finally accumulated a new coat of its original enamel E5 Bright Red. (It was actually a 3 week paint job but you know body men: 3 weeks = 3 years).

At the time I was reassembling this car I was also restoring a 1969 Hemi Charger Daytona that had a 1970 motor in it. As the engine in the red Charger was grenaded by the original owner and the motor it was sold with was date code correct for the Daytona, I swapped them. I never bothered to look at the partial VIN stampings on the blocks. Years later while adjusting the clutch on the Charger I looked at the partial VIN on the block and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. My Charger's numerical VIN ends in 171264. The partial VIN on the swapped block was 171285. According to my research it turns out that I stumbled across the engine from the next Hemi car built right after my Charger. I have never looked at the numbers again: I'm afraid if I look again the numbers will have magically gotten even closer! Christine returns!

As for rarity, Dodge produced 112 Hemi-powered Charger R/T cars in 1970: 56 four speeds and 56 automatics. Of those 112, a much smaller number were ordered as the option upon an option R/T-SE (Special Edition) model. For you Chevy fans, this is akin to a Z-28 Rally Sport - a performance and luxury trim option package combination. It is believed that 4 four speeds and 9 automatics were made as R/T-SE Hemi cars.

When I finished the Charger in 1990, it appeared in Musclecar Review. A few weeks after the magazine hit the newsstands I received a large plain-brown wrapped envelope in the mail. It contained the actual dealer file for my Charger. It turned out that the son of the mechanic who worked on the car at Suburban Dodge in Metuchin, NJ currently worked at the dealership. The same day he received his Musclecar Review magazine was the day he was tasked by the management with cleaning out the old file room. After taking a lunch brake and reading the magazine, he returned to work dumping files in the dumpster. What should land on top? My car's file folder. He opens it up and sees 25 different documents pertaining to the car: scribble sheets, order forms, financing agreements, advanced dealer shipping notices, the delivery truck bill of lading and even the dealer prep work order documenting his dad installing a set of headers for new car delivery to the first owner on 01/03/1970. (How is the Steven King -Christine factor going now?) Anyway, he did some detective work and found my address and sent me the entire package. I eventually got to meet his dad and have him fill out the antifreeze decal he forgot to do in 1970. Great people.

The car has not been babied. I do drive it. Since I bought it at 12,234 miles in 1987, it now has 15,770 miles. A bunch of those miles having been done on the drag strip. Best time 12.77 @ 111 mph in 97 degree heat at Bradenton Speedway in Florida. Which reminds me of another bizarre Christine story. I had the Charger at a Mopar show in Miami Florida in 1992, almost 1700 miles from New Jersey. Out of the crowd a guy comes running up to the car yelling "Is that Dicky Wickberg's car?" He runs right past the front of the car and starts looking at the back window. He then yells out: "It is, it is!" I always wondered about the weird scratches in the back window. He then explains that he and Dicky Wickberg, the original owner’s son were retreating from a “wicked bar fight” in NJ in 1971. They went screaming out of the parking lot just as the beer bottles started flying. One hit dead center in the rear window and shattered the bottle, but only scratching the window glass.

The Charger is rather well optioned with the 426 Hemi backed up with the 18-spline A-833 four speed shifter by way of the infamous Hurst pistol grip shifter. It has the Super Track Pak with 410 Dana rear, PDB, AM-Track stereo, SE package with charcoal leather interior, tinted glass, hood tie downs, engine call out letters on the hood and white bumble bee stripe. The only option I added was power steering, as the car was downright dangerous without it.

I could probably write a novel with all the stories I have run across concerning this car and the wild bunch of characters that have surrounded it over the past 35 years. The title? Christine II of course.

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